In the third quarter results of the Royal London Group, the offshore business sales were down from £307.7m to £270m which were impacted in the year-on-year comparison by the continued “international focus on the higher margin regular business,” the company stated.
Natalie Hall, director of marketing at Royal London 360°, explained the Royal London 360° strategy earlier this year when she said: “Royal London 360° has always ensured that any business we write is at a minimum profit threshold, and the margins in the single premium market in the UK are now so fiercely low that we’d prefer to walk away from the business than write it at a loss to simply grab headline APE.”
Sales on an APE basis, of regular premium savings products were over 60% higher in the first nine months of 2012 than in the same period in 2011. But the market for single premium business “remains challenging”, as others in the market are also finding.
Royal London 360° now has seven wrap platform partnerships in operation, including the Ascentric Offshore Bond on the Royal London-owned platform.
Ascentric showed an 18% decline in net new business to £856.7m which Royal London stated was affected by “general economic conditions combined with the pressures of RDR” serving to dampen growth in the platform market.
Total new life and pensions business (on a PVNBP basis) was equal to the same period in 2011 at £2.6bn.
Total group funds under management increased by 10% to £48.7bn.
